It's 1984, and a young businessman shows up at
Doyle's Cafe, the landmark pub on Washington
Street in Jamaica Plain that Bill, 52, runs with
his older brothers, Ed and Jerry. The fella's
trying to sell a new beer. He's having a tough
day; in fact he's so angry that his face is
busting out red, because the posh Ritz-Carlton
told him his beer "wasn't up to their standards."

Burke laughs about it today: "We thought he was
out of his mind, too. We were all Bud drinkers at
the time. We said, 'What's this stuff?' But we put
it on, anyway. In 10 minutes, everyone loved it."

The beer was Samuel Adams Boston Lager. The young
businessman was Jim Koch, founder and chairman of
the Boston Beer Co. The rest, as they say, is
history. It seems history has a way of finding a
home at Doyle's Cafe, a perpetually popular pub
smack dab in the center of the city that looks
like it witnessed its share of bare-knuckled
brawls back in the days of "Boston Strongboy" John
L. Sullivan. Antique-looking, oversized beer signs
cover the facade. The floor planks inside are
faded and worn by the better part of a century's
worth of tipplers who have made their way to the
long wooden bar. (The bar itself was moved to
Doyle's from an even older pub early in the 20th
century.) Pictures of Boston politicians - mostly
Irish - adorn the walls.

Even Hollywood has been smitten by its charm. The
pub has appeared in movies like "The Brink's Job"
and "Celtic Pride," and out-of-towners today
recognize Doyle's as the local watering hole for
the characters of the Fox TV series "Boston
Public."

Boston's Irish-American community has adopted the
pub, too. Come Saturday, if past St. Patrick's
Days are any indication, cops will direct traffic
out front while bagpipe bands inside entertain the
mayor, a veritable Who's Who of other local
politicians, and a wall-to-wall crowd of singing,
swaying Guinness drinkers.

Thanks to the youngest Burke's guidance, Doyle's
has also grown into a classic American beer bar,
with 26 carefully chosen draft beers, three
hand-pulled cask ales, and a large selection of
bottles. Burke orders the beer, takes the
deliveries, cleans the lines, taps the kegs and
otherwise does everything he can do to ensure the
beer is in the best condition possible. (Among the
beers you won't find at Doyle's are Anheuser-Busch
products, which Burke now refuses to sell. This
doesn't sit well with the Teamsters who deliver
A-B beers; they protested outside Doyle's last St.
Patrick's Day.)

But Doyle's is more than just a great beer bar.
It's something of a museum of Boston brewing
history, and Billy is its curator. He takes great
pride in his role.

"Burkes have been serving beer in Jamaica Plain
since 1918," Billy says, first at the now-defunct
Rossmore Tavern, which his grandparents owned, and
at Doyle's, which Ed Burke bought from the Doyle
family in 1969.

He makes his way down the cellar, where the pub is
connected to the city's brewing legacy at, quite
literally, its most elemental level. Stony Brook,
which begins in Dedham and ends in the Fenway,
runs right under the foundation of the pub. It was
along Stony Brook that Irish and German immigrants
built dozens of breweries in Jamaica Plain and
Roxbury in the 19th century. The hollow, brick
shells of many of these breweries can be seen
today throughout the two neighborhoods, some with
their names, such as Franklin Brewing Co. and
American Brewing Co., still etched in granite and
visible from the street.

The old Haffenraffer Brewery, a few blocks up
Washington Street, sits along the brook, too.
Today it's the home of the Boston Beer Co., and
Doyle's is often the first place in America where
you'll find new or experimental Samuel Adams
beers.

After the most treacherous downpours, the brook
bubbles up into the basement. A water line, two
feet above the foundation, can be seen at various
points along the cellar. The water fills a square
hole cut out of the concrete where booze was hidden
during Prohibition, and threatens an impressive
collection of beer and brewery memorabilia.

The collection includes 12-year-old bottles of
Chimay Grand Reserve and Thomas Hardy's Ale (beers
"that get better with age," Burke says), and
original bottles of Samuel Adams beers, with
generic labels marked "sample." There's also a
large collection of ads for nearly every beer and
brewery that ever made Boston its home. Among
them: Pickwick Ale ("ale that is ale"); J.J.
Pfaff's "lager beer"; and the original Boston Beer
Co., which touted itself as "America's oldest
brewery" (it was established in 1828) and reminded
folks that "Good Food Tastes Better with BB Stock
Ale."

Beer cannot make its way up to the bar by itself,
and the cellar houses a time capsule of
beer-serving technology. An old electric beer pump
sits next to the contemporary canisters of gas -
carbon-dioxide and-or nitrogen - used to push beer
today.

In another crowded section of the basement is a
thin, five-foot tall brass, iron and wood handle
with two brass cylinders at the bottom. Years ago,
it would have been placed next to the bar, and the
bartender would push it back and forth, creating
air pressure to draw beer up out of the kegs in
the cellar to the taps upstairs. It worked much
like the manual keg pumps found at frat parties
today.

There are more stories back upstairs. One of the
centerpieces of the main barroom is a mural of
Paul Revere's ride. The moon over Revere's
shoulder does more than just illuminate the
colonial countryside: it hides a bullet hole put
there by one of the Burke brothers.

The brass railing in the center of the barroom is
a late addition to the pub. It was placed there by
the producers of "The Brink's Job." They wanted it
back after filming was complete but were
hoodwinked out of it by the Burke brothers.

Behind the bar is a small framed picture -
something of a memorial, actually, of a gentleman
to whom Bill Burke feels a special bit of
gratitude. His name was George Dauberschmidt, and
for years he worked for the breweries of Boston,
installing and caring for draft lines.

"Back then breweries sent out someone to clean the
lines, and everyone in the beer business knew
George," Burke says. But, he adds, Dauberschmidt
had a bit of a personality quirk. "He wouldn't
show anybody how to do his work because he was
afraid someone would take his job. But as I got
older he took a shine to me, I guess, and taught
me the trade."

And taught him well, as the thirsty crowds and
national acclaim attest each and every day - but
especially on St. Patrick's Day, when Burke
expects to sell nearly 25 kegs of Guinness alone.

"We never had any idea we'd be this
busy," Burke says. "But we always wanted to sell
the best beer in town."